* Dropped Indiana out of the No. 2 position following its loss to Butler and replaced the Hoosiers with Louisville, which was third last week and has lost only to Duke.

* Indiana fell to No. 4, any easy decision compared to finding a spot for Butler, which was No. 21 on the ballot last week and has two losses (Xavier and Illinois).

It’s tough to make a case that the Bulldogs should be ranked above Indiana given everything else the teams have done thus far — head-to-head can only account for so much when the rest of the resumes aren’t equal.

I ended up slotting them ninth, five below Indiana and one below Illinois, which not only beat Butler soundly on a neutral court but is undefeated.

* Moved Arizona up four spots, to No. 6, after the victory over (previous No. 6) Florida.

Intended to post this Monday but was squeezed for time by football assignments, then waited for the conclusion of Tuesday’s games for a quick comment on the Pac-12 …

Couldn’t help but notice the league is 18-1 thus far. The opposition hasn’t exactly been top-tier — the best win is probably Oregon State over New Mexico State — but one loss is better than four or five losses.

That’s especially true for a league that has suffered its share of early-season losses to RPI-killing opponents the past few years.

Like, for instance, Washington’s home loss to Albany on Tuesday.

(UCLA survived in overtime Tuesday against UC Irvine, which was coached masterfully by for Stanford assistant Russell Turner.)

The first significant tests come Monday, when WSU plays Kansas and UCLA takes on Georgetown.

Action: Big East names CBS executive Mike Aresco its new commissioner while preparing to negotiate a television rights deal that will determine the future of the conference.Reaction I: Of equal or greater significance was the league’s decision to retain Chris Bevilacqua as chief negotiator with potential TV partners. I won’t say Bevilacqua was the brains behind the Pac-12’s $3 billion deal with ESPN/Fox because Larry Scott’s a pretty smart guy himself. But Bevilacqua was the central behind-the-scenes player in the most lucrative deal ever signed by a college conference. The founder of College Sports TV and a former Penn State football player, he’s as astute as they come within the sports TV industry in terms of understanding content delivery across multiple platforms (TVs, tablets, Androids, etc.) and the value of that content.Reaction II: Interesting how the circle has come full. When Larry Scott hired Bevilacqua to assist the Pac-12 in negotiations, it raised eyebrows, and a few snickers: Bevilacqua wasn’t one of the traditional consultants retained by conferences to sign deals with ESPN and others. (Nor was Scott a traditional commissioner, I’d add.) Then Bevilacqua teamed with Scott and a sizzling marketplace to land the $3 billion deal … and now the Big East is hiring him to orchestrate a do-or-die negotiation.

As always: The following rankings are subject to (major) revision following spring recruiting and NBA Draft decisions.

And those decisions will come much earlier this year: The deadline, if you hadn’t heard, has changed … to April 10.

At the urging of college coaches, who wanted players to make their decisions before the spring recruiting period ended, the NCAA moved up the deadline — it’s now so early that players cannot work out for NBA teams.

(So nice of the NCAA and its coaches to put the players. Or not.)

Of course, the NBA’s deadline remains April 29, so we’ll see how the situation unfolds. Don’t be surprised if some players announce they are staying put by April 10 and then reverse course by the 29th and leave school.

Due after the Selection Sunday announcement, the final AP top-25 poll is the least-newsworthy of the season.

But in the interest of transparency, let’s take a quick break from March Madness coverage for the ballot I submitted Sunday night — along with three All-American teams and votes for player and coach of the year.